Published 1:05 pm, Friday, May 9, 2014

But Oracle vowed to keep fighting and just scored a major win in appeals court, reports Reuters. The appeals court said that Oracle could claim copyright protection on a part of Java known as an application programming interface (API). An API is some software code that allows two programs to talk to each other.

This overturned a ruling by a lower court that said Oracle could not claim copyright protection. It has major implications for the software industry. This is code that is by its nature designed to be used by others. If a company can charge royalties for it, saying another's APIs mimic its own, that could lead to even more lawsuits in an already litigious industry.

Still Oracle can't help grinning about the win. The company sent us this statement from Dorian Daley Oracle General Counsel:

"We are extremely pleased that the Federal Circuit denied Google's attempt to drastically limit copyright protection for computer code. The Federal Circuit's opinion is a win for Oracle and the entire software industry that relies on copyright protection to fuel innovation and ensure that developers are rewarded for their breakthroughs. We are confident that the district court will appropriately apply the fair use doctrine on remand, which is not intended to protect naked commercial exploitation of copyrighted material."

It's not clear how much money Oracle could extract from Google should this appeal hold.